Disappointing Games

Posted on January 29, 2009, 12:16 pm, by Gordon, under General MMORPG.

After putting it off for weeks I finally got round to buying Red Alert 3. I was a big fan of the series and I thought that this would be a really safe bet – a guaranteed good game that will keep me going through the cold month of January.

So, you can probably tell from the title of this blog that it didn’t go too well. I’m not saying Red Alert 3 is a bad game (in many ways it’s awesome) but it’s just…. kind of pish.

I could go into a review of it here but thats not really what I wanted to talk about. Why is it that soooo often the anticipation of the game is FAR better than the finished product?

Am I expecting too much? These things have to be made for a whole range of people so it’s not likely that I’m going to like everything but… you’d think there would be a solid foundation at least.

Maybe I get too wrapped up in the hype, I often do. I bought Spore because of all the hype, took it home and discovered it wasn’t revolutionary at all, just a collection of boring mini-games (that’s really all it is).

Maybe its the licence? I will buy the Ghostbusters game but a wee voice in the back of my mind is telling me it wont be great. I bought the Lich King and I’m still nowhere near seeing any of its new content.

Maybe its the gimmicks – the cast in Red Alert sounded good. The executions in Age of Conan were cool.

I think as the games market gets bigger and bigger the games themselves will get more generic to appeal to a mass audience (not necessarily bad games but just… generic). In the future I think it’ll take more effort to find a properly satisfying good game.

And that’s kind of interesting – the games market is now so big it’s like the film industry; there’s a lot of (sometimes entertaining) pish but if you want a really good experience you have to go out of your comfort zone and find a weird little indie film that works for you.

I didn’t like the co-commanders idea. I like to take my time with the map and the comp would often go running in (despite my commands). Maybe Dawn of War 2 will be good – the first one was pretty awesome.

Who am I?

Gordon was born on the mean-streets of suburban Holland and learned to fist fight without remorse in steel cage matches at an early age. He now lives in Edinburgh with his wife and their imaginary Nigerian bodyguard, Mr Itunu.